Independent oversight institutions are critical components of the accountability landscape in modern democracies. This paper assess the strength of the accountability powers of three main watchdog institutions in the EU, the European Ombudsman (EO) the European Court of Auditors (ECA) and OLAF. The paper presents a comprehensive analysis of how these three EU watchdog institutions promote accountability. It looks at its formal and institutional powers and the accountability practice in these watchdogs that operate in the EU multilevel governance context. The aim is to provide a richer evidence base to the role and function of external accountability arrangements and their effectiveness.
We apply an index to assess the strength of the accountability powers, and data are collected by means of an expert survey, a study of secondary sources and analysis of annual reports and other relevant documents. A comparison of the accountability the power of the three institutions shows clear differences between these three EU watchdogs.
